Is Microsoft Excel the reason why tigers can’t be counted?That’s the official explanation, howsoever bizarre it may sound, behind the fact that as many as 15 out of 17 tiger states have not filed their primary census data to the Centre.

Not only does this push the whole exercise—ordered after the alarming fall in the tiger population last year—one year beyond its scheduled deadline of August 2006, it also delays any policy intervention further threatening the existing tigers.

What hasn’t helped matters is the fact that the Bill to empower Project Tiger by forming a Tiger Conservation Authority with constitutional power is still hanging fire. It was supposed to be introduced in the Rajya Sabha on May 17 but a last-minute intervention by the CPI(M) deferred it indefinitely.

In phase one of the census, every tiger state was supposed to compile and send its field data to the Centre by March this year. Until now, only two of 17 tiger states have complied. Even those two states Andhra Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh missed the deadline by more than a month. While some other states have sent partial data, six are still sitting on it. These are Jharkhand, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Arunachal and Assam.

Talking to The Sunday Express, Project Tiger director Rajesh Gopal attributed the delay to “technical problems faced by the states in filling up modified Excel sheets.”

Barring a few places in the North-east, the massive operation of collecting field data across the country was over by February. This data was supposed to be compiled at respective state headquarters and then sent to Project Tiger and the Wildlife Institute of India (WII), Dehra Dun, for analysis within a month.

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